Black Falcon

But then all Baseplates should retire not only the blue one. On the other side, would make more sense to me to retire the white one instead of the blue one, so who knows.

There are still so many options they could do, that I actually think this doesn´t have to be the case here. There is potential for several more series within the franchise, especially since you could easily do repeats (or recolours like @Lacdaran mentioned) with different combinations of race/class and just different design. In the end DnD is a series full of Figures that are constantly the most sought-after figures in CMF-Series. And personally another DnD and a Castle one would be my favourites if asked which Series I would hope for next.

Not going to say it would be likely, but I would love to get a Raya minifigure... But in the end I will stay with D&D as my guess.

What Lego has done does look completely different (aside from beeing based on the same characters of course) from Megablocks desgin, so that comparism is way off IMO. Which of both you like better is a matter of taste in the end and for me neither of them is doing it. Making them more blocky, especially in this size is understandable I think, as it would be quite hard to do them justice with bricks and at the same time keeping them stable enough with play. Mega choose to make more special moulds to build them, but in the end they are not doing much with those, the figures look at the same time horrible but not like they were made out of bricks, so you could just buy better action figs/models of them.

Was this for Designers or overall Staff? Overall, there are still plenty Designers left that love the classic themes and actually I am under the age of 38 too and had one or more sets from Space, Castle, Western and Adventurers, I mean Castle ended just 2013 so not long enough that anyone had to grow up without it - but sure sets changed with the time and themes did too, like many Bionicle Fans are adults now, but Fortnite and co. are IMO on shelves simply because they are popular right now.

Given it is probably the most iconic Pokemon thanks to the series and I would expect the license to last a while, it is very likely to happen after the actual one retires I think.

I still think very low if we are talking about a big Set, the only thing I could imagine is a Display set.

Maybe some come next month, because January wave usually is pretty big so a lot new parts are getting added aswell.

Ah, well I guess some discussion about these has been mixed in when the city sets were revealed and I thought it would be new birds.

Yeah, stores with those stations get a bigger variety of accessories. The two January birds, yes, but wasn´t there a mention about brids in the city sets too?

Did they have only BAM or also a station to print your own torsos? Also, we are at 4 new birds for this year now, did anyone manage to find hi-res pics of them where you can get a good look on them?

Well, in the end the limit is Set and while sure it would be nice to say, hey its just one cent you get it anyways, but I don´t think the store actually has any influence on that. In the end when you get it for pne cent less the next one will just miss it for one cent again - and like already mentioned above it should be really easy to find a figure or something else to reach the threshold. As far as I am aware, that is how it is supposed to be, but of course there can be stores that just decide to not be so strict on it.

The Jade rabbit also was release mid-year, though probably not everyone would count him towards the rest. No idea how the theme is officially called as it is just placed under "other" in their shop, so probably it isn´t even an own theme officially. Brickset lists them under Seasonals as Chinese Traditional Festival, probably better than listing them as Chinese new year but probably not completely hitting the nail either.

It only comes in a 250€ Set, so I fear the price will not be the lowest for the next time. If the theme goes on, he might appear in a smaller set too I hope.

No, a new Chinese Seasonal one.

Basically calf is the right term for reindeer, same as bull and cow are used for the adult ones. In the end there are many names used for deer based on size (not of the individual but the species) but also on age of an animal. In the end I think we all understand what is meant whether you call it calf or fawn and the adults, stag, bull, buck, doe, cow and so on.

To me it is the best Set of the series they have done for a long time. I like the more historical aproach of it, rather than a modern scene.

Pretty sure it is the later. In the end it is logical he doesn´t run around with his jacket all the time, when he is in the factory or his office. Can also understand that they still decided to include a christmas Santa, though of course Santa is basically the figure I am least excited about - elves you can use multiple of, but I have enough Santas sitting around aready. Winter village would be a likely choice, or any other Christmas related set of course. But aside from that, I don´t think the Advent Calendar can´t get a new mould, in the end it is probably just a matter of how the budget is used, which I think just goes to prints and recolours normally.

Do we even have a reveal date leaked yet? I mean aside from the leak from the greek shop, the HP leak we got now is the usual "short before reveal" leak, which is said to be tomorrow.

In the end consumers decided what they would buy and what not, so if people wouldn´t have bought Star Wars but Space instead, guess what we would have on shelves now. That list is not complete though.

There are like 400 to 600 Submissions for one round, of course not all are getting as far as crowdfunding. There is a peoples vote on all designs, after which the designs are choosen by the team (so not 5 castle sets make it for instance) and those 5 are getting refined by the fan designers with the help from Lego. And those 5 are going to crowdfunding, so there is no other round inbetween.

Lost City was a bit over 8k Sets, not 10k, but that was the only one that didn´t make it to that benchmark. However the average can´t be 30k, since just few sets went over that point and there are several that just made it to about10k and others that didn´t reach the maximum either. The only series that was actually selling almost the maximum of the 150k Sets in total was the last one, there are some that just sold about 70% of the Sets avaiable so the avarage should be more about 25k Sets. About how many Sets are made for normal ones I can´t say much, as Lego won´t tell anyways, but if you say a production run has less than 100k you shouldn´t forget that there is not just one production run, as not all sets are produced at the same time, let alone the same factory. But as those numbers are pure speculation there isn´t much to compare there anyways IMO. Well, the target for those Sets are AFOLs and people learn about them through online blogs, forums (like this one) and marketing emails from Lego + the bricklink team beeing there and showing them live on lego events. Aside of that, of course you are right that sales would be a lot higher if those would be normal sets with higher avaiability, especially to normal consumers. But at the same time production, logistics and overall effort and costs would increase too. I would disagree here. BDP fills a niche. And that it is done the way it is done has a reason, sure you want new stuff and all and I can understand that, in the end everyone would love it. But in the end everything they would change and especially having new moulds, parts, prints etc for it will increase costs and while as it is Lego can just make those sets without much risk and can easily produce sets that they otherwise wouldn´t do. So instead of wishing for BDP sets to show up in ideas, you could just aswell wish that they would just make more classic ideas sets - though I don´t see much more chance for that happening either honestly.

Yes. The thing about BDP is that they can just produce it in one go, so they basically have to make sure all the parts are produced beforehand that they need and put together their sets. If you would make an own theme out of it you would need budget for the parts etc as all of it needs storage and a higher production capacity, which is just not there. On the same time it would basically remove all differences between the BDP and Ideas and make the bdp sets ideas ones, so in the end, you would have ideas and essentially just remove the bdp completely.

Aside from maybe Orthanc all of them have been playsets, that are not really suited to display along the newer Sets honestly. Not to mention the Moria set only featured the tomb of Balin, so there is still a huge part of it missing - and I don´t think Lego really considers those old sets to much anyways, since it has been a lot time since then and how many people that would be potential buyers for the LotR sets really own them?

Moria is no major location to you? Or you´re fine with the booknook?